Blog

Frances Carbines is currently on a six month paid internship with the Association of British Orchestras as part of the Creative Employment Programme. Last Monday she attended This Is It!, the first in a series of events we are running across England for all paid interns and apprentices on the Creative Employment Programme. She has written a blog about her experience of the day and her internship so far:

In September I became the first paid intern of the Association of British Orchestras, as part of the Creative Employment Programme. After what seemed like an interminable period of job applications and unpaid internships which provided me with few new skills and chronic financial instability, it was fantastic to finally have the opportunity to learn on the job and to know that I was a valued member of the team, with each day’s work earning a day’s wage. I was keen to attend the inaugural This Is It! event hosted at Sadler’s Wells, as the programme heralded a day filled with creative activities as well as the chance to learn more about the wider aims of the programme, while meeting fellow beneficiaries.

It was also a rare opportunity to network with arts professionals I’d never otherwise meet in day-to-day life, given their level of seniority within their organisations. That afternoon I found myself presenting a creative brief to Mike Smith, President of Music at Virgin EMI, whose career trajectory both surprised and inspired his listeners. The man who would one day sign Blur, we discovered, started as a post boy for Universal, sorting through paperwork and heaving sacks about the post room. He told us how he used his initiative to get his budding talent noticed in what to him seemed an impenetrable industry, despite his parents’ initial misgivings, having no contacts within the sector and lacking any relevant prior experience or training.

The day’s programme of activities included brainstorming tasks among fellow interns and apprentices, as well as a series of workshops with a focus on learning and sharing knowledge about freelance career paths. We were then invited to attend the launch of Building a Creative Nation at the Southbank Centre, where Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg lauded the efforts of creative organisations who’d committed to offering paid placements, and urged those as yet undecided to do likewise. Also, the Southbank Centre’s Artistic Director Jude Kelly OBE stressed the importance of championing young people in the arts, highlighting the Southbank Centre’s own input over the past few decades.

As an intern new to the world of work, it can seem immensely dispiriting to be told: ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know’ by well-meaning ‘get your foot in the door’ advisers, as is often the case when searching for answers at this stage. However, at This Is It!, the emphasis was very much on how someone in the same position as the interns and apprentices of the scheme could make the most of each available opportunity to meet people, who in turn could offer them guidance and lead them in the right direction. Having the support of the Creative Employment Programme, and its partners, associates and advocates will be a crucial element of the professional and personal development of every young person who takes part.

Here is our CEO Martin Bright’s latest article for The Guardian on how the UK can create jobs through the arts. Enjoy!

I first had the idea of setting up a youth employment charity in 2008, and it all seemed so simple then. I wanted to harness the success of Britain’s creative industries to help get young people off the dole and into work. As the economy collapsed, I was inspired by the cultural projects of the Roosevelt-era that helped the early careers of a generation of American artists. I hoped that by putting young people into creative jobs, we might find the next generation of Jackson Pollocks, Saul Bellows and Orson Welleses. Give me another 10 years and I will tell you whether we have succeeded.

In a small charity like ours, it is easy to get distracted from the job you set out to do in the first place. When survival depends on chasing the next contract or donation or grant, a kind of charitable mission creep can sometimes set in. This is a particular problem for specialist welfare-to-work charities, which can end up chasing so-called outcome payments, for getting people into jobs, at the expense of their core principles. It demands a steely discipline to keep to that founding vision, but also a degree of flexibility to ensure that you are still helping people make their lives better. We specialise in getting people into jobs in theatres, arts centres and film companies, but what happens when we meet someone at a jobcentre who desperately wants to work in childcare? The answer, of course, is that we find them a job in childcare.

In these difficult times we have been forced to diversify and I am proud of our work to end the practice of unpaid internships in the arts and of setting up the first apprenticeships in MPs offices through our Parliamentary Academy scheme.

But creating jobs in the creative industries is what we are passionate about – and making those jobs available to as wide a talent pool as possible. Earlier this month we heard that we would be working on the Arts Council’s £15m Creative Employment Programme, which will put 6,500 trainees, apprentices and paid interns into work over the next two years. In collaboration with the sector skills council, Creative and Cultural Skills, we will be running the Creative Academy, a series of regional workshops and networking events for the young people involved to prepare them for working life. We hope to hold our first event in the North East in autumn, followed by the other regions over the course of the next year.

We are also delighted that the scheme has adopted our fair access principle, which commits organisations to good employment practices, including paying all interns. We advocate paying at least the national minimum wage and the living wage where possible. This is an important example of how pioneering the arts can be and, if it works, there is no reason the fair access principle couldn’t be built into all government procurement. In future, no arts organisation that employs unpaid interns should receive Arts Council money and the same should apply to all government contractors.

The Creative Employment Programme demonstrates how enlightened public-sector institutions working closely with arts organisations, charities, local councils and private-sector employers can confront a real social problem and provide new ways to tackle it.

The real test, as ever, will come with the delivery of the scheme. But if enough employers sign up, the Creative Employment Programme will provide a challenging alternative model of work creation for any future government to consider.

There has been widespread shock at the sacking of all the arts critics at the Independent on Sunday. It is difficult to see how a newspaper can expect to be taken seriously without a respected culture section, but the editor has finally broken cover to justify the decision. Using Slipped Disc, the blog of the respected music critic and novelist Norman Lebrecht, Lisa Markwell cited “the economic state of all of Britain’s newspapers, and the Independent titles in particular”, in mitigation. Here full response can be seen here: http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2013/08/editor-who-sacked-all-arts-critics-submits-her-reasoning.html

The piece immediately sparked a discussion on Twitter about this unprecedented situation, where every single critic on a national newspaper has been shown the door. People also raised the issue of unpaid internships at the Independent titles and elsewhere in the industry.

The Creative Society has worked hard to persuade arts organisation to stop this practice. The Arts Council and Creative & Cultural Skills should be congratulated for building our Fair Access Principle into the new £15 million scheme to create 6,500 employment opportunities. The Creative Employment Programme is a model for future government procurement – not a penny of public money should go to organisations that use unpaid labour.

Let’s just hope that arts writers who contribute to the Independent on Sunday in future insist on being paid a fee for their work. That’s if they can bear to work for a publication prepared to indulge in such a brutal act of philistinism.

A census of creative employers by Creative Skillset has found that whilst 4,000 new jobs have been created in the sector since 2009, the representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups (BAME) has decreased, with 2000 BAME people leaving the industry since 2009. More positive was the finding that representation of women rose to 36% from 27% in 2009, an increase of 16,000.

However, the results show there is still some distance to go in establishing a more diverse creative workforce and eradicating the prevailing ‘who you know, not what you know’ culture of recruitment.

The Creative Society’s Fair Access campaign has been working with creative employers over the last year to promote best practice and encourage creative employers to widen the talent pool they recruit from. Our Fair Access Principle was informed by excellent guidance developed by the sector skills councils, Creative Skillset (who recently launched new guidelines) and Creative and Cultural Skills, who published their guidance with the Arts Council in 2011.

So far our principle, which as explained in a previous blog, asks creative employers to publicly pledge to a minimum standard of recruitment, has received over 50 signatories. By working with employers and the sector skills councils over the next 12 months we hope we can significantly increase that number and begin to make the creative industries a more diverse sector based on talent, not background.

The Parliamentary Academy is currently recruiting for the next round of apprentices. See below for details on how you can apply:

If you would like to find details on how you can apply to be a trainee in the constituency office of Caroline Dineage MP then please click here.
(NB the successful candidate will be based in Gosport, near Portsmouth)

This 12 month apprenticeship scheme combines ‘on the job’ training, working for an MP in their office, with a formal qualification in Business & Administration. There are opportunities with MPs from all major political parties.Successful candidates will work Monday to Thursday in an office assistant role. Once a fortnight you will take part in workshops and carryout your study towards an NVQ Level 2/3 Business & Administration qualification. For further information on the Parliamentary Academy Apprenticeship scheme please contact Simon on 020 7845 5835.Main purpose
To play an important support role within a parliamentary office. Completing a course of study and obtaining work related professional qualifications. We are looking for Parliamentary Trainees with a keen interest in politics. The successful candidate will display a can-do attitude.(more…)